Difficult heroics that require cc and strategy are great, but the way it was delivered this expansion was just bad timing.

First off, we were all fresh from an expansion that exemplified the exact opposite of that playstyle (Wrath AOE fest where CC was actually a hindrance). Months and months of WOTLK ensured that new players never learned these skills, and old players completely lost these habits. Indeed, I remember multiple groups as a healer where after requesting CC to help from going OOM so fast I would get the honest response "what's cc??". Furthermore, the entire 1-80 content only exacerbates this problem, as with the buffs to gearing and nerfs to content, 1-80 dungeons are usually quite trivial and a mindless faceroll. After literally days of content of training new players to just zerg and aoe, they suddenly hit a brick wall of pain in 80-85 dungeons, which demand them to suddenly and flawlessly change to a playstyle they never knew existed, never learned, and don't even know how to execute.

That above was enough to create a disaster. Now throw in some more bad alignment of events: healing redesign. Healing was retooled in a way that was the dramatic opposite of WOTLK style healing. Old habits that were handsomely rewarded and ingrained in wotlk suddenly crashed and burned, resulted in going OOM in seconds. Healer's that were flexible and willing to both relearn their class AND relearn how healing worked hit the second difficulty: many if not most dps players and tanks did not/could not/or would not make the necessary playing adjusgments (TBC style careful pulls with CC) which meant that ALL of the dungeon encounter difficulty got stacked on the healer.

The two of those things certainly is ripe for disaster, but now throw in one more bad alignment of events: uninspiring end-game content. The truth of Cataclysm was that the meat of the expansion was the new 1-60 content, but most players expected it to be the 80-85 content. There were fewer dungeons at-release than the prior two expansions, and due to the aforementioned points players became burned-out of those dungeons even faster. This was exacerbated further by a slower gearing rate compared to WOTLK.


For the above reasons, what was great in principle was a disaster in practice. It's not that players are lazy or stupid and desire mindless content; it's simply that they just want to have fun, and this expansion's end-game content involved changes that were implemented with the subtlety of a train-wreck. Heck, player's like a challenge: WOTLK, despite much wailing, wasn't the eazy-sauce faceroll people make it out to be. The dungeons, when appropriately geared, could be just as challenging at the start of the expansion. The only difference is that one could out-gear WOTLK dungeons much, much faster than Cata dungeons, and hence they got the incorrect perception of being easy.

Players like a challenge, but more than anything they want to have fun. If we can have both, then the more the merrier. But challenge without fun, especially when it's delivered in the form of boring and limited number of dungeons, is no fun at all.

I am one of those players who healed heroics and pugs like you can't believe all through WoTLK. I pined for the days of TBC healing, but the way it was executed in Cata was a disaster, and I dropped my main healer in favor of rolling a rogue. Now I play my rogue and do nothing but pve solo, slowly leveling and savoring the real gem of Cata, old-world content.